Opportunity

It has been a great ride, a wonderful journey, a destiny fulfilled. Years of research and endless hard work that I have lovingly enjoyed has paid off with a few simple words from a reporter from the Review. He called me a "continual wonder" and "an local history expert". Imagine my surprise when I read those words because the last thing I have ever considered myself was "a continual wonder" or "expert in local history".

I am just a person who loves her family and likes a good story. It has been a labor of love for a family whom I am proud to have descended from. It has been a labor of love for my children to someday know who they are and where they came from. It is work I have a passion and joy for. I love to fill in the pieces of the puzzle called "someone else's life".

What started as a simple family history about my family evolved into a local history of all the folks who lived, worshiped, worked and raised children. How can I write about John Keller without mentioning he lived in a small industrious town called Manayunk? How can I write about him being interred in Bethany without mentioning that this was a small German Lutheran Cemetery filled with 19th century German Immigrants? How can I write about 19th century German Immigrants without mentioning Karl & Dorthea Voigt interred in that same cemetery whose son Henry Charles Voigt fought, died and was buried out at Little Big Horn? How can I write about William Gallagher without mentioning he was my grandfather who lived in that same Manayunk town? Who worked in steel mills? How can I write about working in steel mills without mentioning which two mills he worked at, Pencoyd and Midvale? How can I write about his son John (Uncle Jack) without mentioning the cemetery in East Fall's called Laurel Hill where Jack was good friends with the Proud Family and worked mowing the grounds when Midvale Steel was on strike? How can I write about Laurel Hill Cemetery without mentioning its own unique history?

It goes on and on and on like the snowflake that becomes the snowball that eventually turns into an avalanche of information.

Before, I knew it my simple family history snow-balled into a history about not only them but about the persons, places and things they were associated with. I posted my research and before I knew it others doing the same research found my site and emailed me to ask if I had any information about so and so or about this and that. I answer all my emails and I freely give away any and all information I have discovered because that is what history is all about, the sharing of information, the connecting between people and events, the love of piecing the parts of every puzzle together.

Thank you Bernard Scally of the Review.

Thank you Marijane.

Thank you to everyone who reads this blog.

I really love and appreciate you all.